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AMD has released their latest 40nm Radeon HD 4770, offering full DirectX 10.1 support for $109 with 960 GFlops of raw compute performance. This product follows AMD’s recent ATI Radeon HD 4890 release (April 2), which included an 850 MHz core clock, memory clock at 975 MHz, 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and a maximum board power of 160 watts on a 55nm process technology, with an idle power consumption down 30% to 60 watts.

While the 4890 represents AMD’s fastest non-X2 offering to date (selling at a sub-$260 MSRP), this newest 4770 release opens up the world of full DirectX 10.1 support to a much wider audience. With up to 30% better gaming performance with DX 10.1 over DX 10.0 alone, if you’re in the market to buy a new video card there is no reason to choose a DirectX 10.0 card alone, when DirectX 10.1 offers significantly better performance, and a new 40nm process technology.

ATI Radeon 4770

It was originally believed AMD would target the sub-$100 market with their new 4770 directly with a $99 offering. However, AMD has decided to tack on an extra $10, though Geek.com has been told most resellers will offer a $10 rebate, bringing the price back down to $99. In addition, some retailers may still offer it at $99.

The Radeon HD 4770 offers dual-DVI output, third generation DirectX 10.1 support on their latest 40 nm process technology and second generation GDDR5 implementation, providing nearly 1 Teraflop of performance for $109, or 9.17 GFlops per dollar. Compared to the 4890 and its 1.36 Teraflops for $260 at 5.23 GFlops per dollar, the 4770 represents a 1.75x better value with a relatively limited reduction in performance, one at a performance level that many of us would more than enjoy upgrading to.

AMD’s decision to sell this card as a sub-$100 product (after rebate) is a clear sign it’s positioned as a “recession proof” product, as the higher-end cards are often put on the back-burner as an unnecessary expenses during times of recession. As a result, AMD’s Radeon HD 4770 card offers extremely playable game performance for the value conscious buyer, actually offering better performance than the highest-end $500+ graphics cards of just a couple years ago.

Radeon
HD 4670

Radeon
HD 4770

Radeon
HD 4850

Process

55 nm

40 nm
RV740 GPU

55 nm

Transistors

514 M

826 M

956 M

Engine
Clock

750 MHz

750 MHz

625 MHz

Stream
Processors

320

640

800

Compute
Performance

480
Gigaflops

960
Gigaflops

1000
GFlops

Texture Units

32

32

40

Texture Fillrate

24
GTexels/s

24
GTexels/s

25
GTexels/s

ROPs

8

16

6

Pixel Fillrate

6
GPixels/s

12
GPixels/s

10
GPixels/s

Z Stencil

32

64

64

Z Fillrate

24
GSamps/s

48
GSamps/s

40
GSamps/s

Memory Type

GDDR3

GDDR5

GDDR3

Memory Clock

1000
MHz

800
MHz

1000
MHz

Frame Buffer

512 MB
1 GB

512 MB

512 MB
1 GB

Memory Data

2.0 Gbps

3.2 Gbps

2.0 Gbps

Memory Bus

128-bit

128-bit

256-bit

Memory
Bandwidth

32.0 GB/s

51.2 GB/s

64.0 GB/s

Max Power

59 watts

80 watts

110 watts

Idle Power

Not provided by AMD

Performance Per Watt

8.1
GFlops

12.0
GFlops

9.0
GFlops

The ATI Radeon HD 4770 delivers an impressive Gigaflops per watt, and with full DirectX 10.1 support, will be enough horsepower for most gaming applications — especially at the $99 MSRP price point (after rebate).

While the information on ATI Radeon HD 4770 was embargoed, some information was released early. Express Review, did a comprehensive benchmark analysis of the card as far back as last Friday, April 24, 2009.

Single
4770
(fps)

Two 4770 cards
via CrossFire
(fps)

Call of Duty 4
1920 x 1200 4xAA 8xAF

73.5

124.2
+69%

2560 x 1600 4xAA 8xAF

45.9

85.3
+85.8%

Devil May Cry 4
1920 x 1200 4xAA 8xAF

52.1

102.3
+96.4%

2560 x 1600 4xAA 8xAF

47.4

92.7
+95.6%

ET: Quake Wars
1920 x 1200 8xAA 16xAF

60.3

89.4
+48.3%

2560 x 1600 8xAA 16xAF

37.2

67.6
+81.7%

Left 4 Dead
1920 x 1200 4xAA 8xAF

55.7

100.9
+81.1%

2560 x 1600 4xAA 8xAF

34.6

64.2
+85.5%

Lost Planet: Colonies
1920 x 1200 4xAA 8xAF

33.0

62.0
+87.9%

2560 x 1600 4xAA 8xAF

27.0

53.0
+96.3%

Stormrise
1920 x 1200 4xAA 8xAF

34.7

67.2
+93.7%

2560 x 1600 4xAA 8xAF

29.8

58.3
+95.6%

Unigine Tropics DX9
1920 x 1200

34.7

68.3
+96.8%

2560 x 1600

29.8

58.8
+97.3%

Unreal Tournament 3
1920 x 1200 8xAA 16xAF

38.7

64.7
+67.2%

2560 x 1600 8xAA 16xAF

27.4

57.9
+111.3%

Average fps score at:
1920 x 1200

47.8

84.9+77.4%

Average fps score at:
2560 x 1600

34.9

67.2+92.7%

Radeon HD 4890

Released April 2, 2009, the Radeon HD 4890 represents a faster clock rate and greater performance at the expense of additional power consumption. It now tops out at 190 watts max for the dual-slot card alone. AMD told Geek.com that the card does offer an increased idle power savings of only 60 watts, compared to 90 watts in the former top 4870 card. Since most graphics cards spend a fair share of their time at idle, this can make a huge difference in overall platform consumption when the graphics card is not being used significantly (as in for gaming or compute tasks).

Overall the performance increase is 13.3% with the card costing below $260 MSRP. An interesting trend to observe is the decreasing performance offered per watt. While the cards are getting faster, now 36% faster than the 4850 model and 13.3% faster than the 4870 model, the “performance-per-watt” has decreased 21.2% since the 4850.

Radeon
HD 4850

Radeon
HD 4870

Radeon
HD 4890

Process

55 nm

40 nm

55 nm

Transistors

956 M

956 M

956 M

Engine
Clock

625 MHz

750 MHz
(+20%)

625 MHz
(+13.3%)

Stream
Processors

800

800

800

Compute
Performance

1.0
Teraflops

1.2
Teraflops

1.36
Teraflops

Texture Units

40

40

40

Texture Fillrate

25
GTexels/s

30
GTexels/s
(+20%)

25
GTexels/s
(+13.3%)

ROPs

16

16

16

Pixel Fillrate

10
GPixels/s

12
GPixels/s
(+20%)

13.6
GPixels/s
(+13.3%)

Z Stencil

64

64

64

Z Fillrate

40.0
GSamps/s

48.0
GSamps/s
(+20%)

54.4
GSamps/s
(+13.3%)

Memory Type

GDDR3

GDDR5

GDDR5

Memory Clock

1000
MHz

900
MHz

975
MHz

Frame Buffer

512 MB
1 GB

512 MB
1 GB

1 GB

Memory Data

2.0 Gbps

3.2 Gbps
(+80%)

2.0 Gbps
(+8.3%)

Memory Bus

256-bit

256-bit

256-bit

Memory
Bandwidth

64.0 GB/s

115.0 GB/s
(+79.7%)

124.8 GB/s
(+8.5%)

Max Power

110 watts

160 watts
(+45.5%)

190 watts
(+18.8%)

Idle Power

30 watts

90 watts
(+300%)

60 watts
(-30%)

Performance Per Watt

9.09
GFlops

7.50
GFlops
(-17.5%)

7.16
GFlops
(-4.6%)

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 represents the best performing non-X2 video card offered by AMD at present, though the card does support ATI CrossFire and can operate with additional graphics cards for increased single-application performance.

Overclocking

ATI’s latest Catalyst Driver comes with a built-in control panel allowing these cards to overclock core frequencies. While the factory clock speed setting is 850 MHz, AMD told Geek.com they’ve been able to easily get the cards to clock in excess of a 1 GHz on the standard cooling solution which ships on the card, though they refused to comment on how high they’ve gotten the card to perform in the lab on radical cooling. They say only that it’s been “substantially higher”. AMD noted they expect after-market coolers in the next few weeks which will allow for even greater end-user overclocking performance.

There are some companies offering factory-overclocked cards at 950 MHz or higher, for a premium price somewhere north of $260. The cards will have full warranties provided as well, AMD told us, provided by the company selling overclocked cards. Thiss hould boost the actual throughput up from 1.36 GFlops to 1.5 GFlops and higher.

The gaming performance delivered by the 4890 compares nicely to ATI’s former non-X2 offerings, as well as their primary competition (Nvidia). AMD actually reported the relative performance in frame rates to various games with traditional high-end settings, which show 23% to 47% greater performance than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 260 216, and performance which is around 10% faster than the former Radeon HD 4870. Note: While this Nvidia card is not the most powerful offering by that company, it is the one which is comparably priced.

Nvidia
GeForce
GTX 260
(Baseline)

ATI Radeon
HD 4870

ATI Radeon
HD 4890

Crysis Warhead
1920 x 1200
4xAA 8xAF

1.0

1.13x
(+13%)

1.52x
(+34%)

Devil May Cry 4
1920 x 1200
4xAA 16xAF

1.0

1.37x
(+37%)

1.66x
(+21%)

Far Cry 2
1920 x 1200

1.0

1.11x
(+11%)

1.23x
(+11%)

GTA IV
1920 x 1200
8xAA 16xAF

1.0

1.13x
(+13%)

1.27x
(+12.4%)

Left 4 Dead
1920 x 1200
8xAA 16xAF

1.0

1.11x
(+11%)

1.22x
(+10%)

STALKER CS
1920 x 1200

1.0

1.09x
(+9%)

1.24x
(+14%)

Note: Percentages in each column are relative to data in column immediately left, such as HD 4870 performing above GTX 260, and 4890 performing above 4870.

4890
Alone

Two 4890 cards
via CrossFire

Chronicles of
Riddick:
AODA
2560 x 1600
8xAA 16xAF

1.0

1.80, (+80% gain)

Left 4 Dead
2560 x 1600
8xAA 16xAF

1.0

1.85x, (+85% gain)

Devil May Cry4
2560 x 1600
4xAA 8xAF

1.0

1.94x, (+94% gain)

Crysis Warhead
2560 x 1600
4xAA 8xAF

1.0

1.79x, (+79% gain)

Company of Heroes
2560 x 1600
4xAA 8xAF

1.0

1.80x, (+80% gain)

Call of Duty 4
2560 x 1600
4xAA 8xAF

1.0

1.74x, (+74% gain)

{ad}AMD said they have no plans to manufacture an ATI Radeon 4890 X2 card. ATI’s Crossfire technology allows two separate cards to operate together for graphics processing in a single game, as the single X2 cards do internally. The scaling performance shows notable increases across the board, approaching 2x in Devil May Cry 4, and always above 74% in every game.